Skinning the Invisible Knapsack, Part 1 of 5

Among schoolgoys, there is a rather vindictive prank one can do to a classmate who has left his backpack or bookbag unattended, known as skinning. The bag is emptied of its contents, turned inside out, and then zipped back up with all of its contents inside.

In 1988, Peggy McIntosh published one of the seminal works in the far-left dominated academic field which has come to be called “Whiteness Studies” in a number of circles. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” is an excerpt taken from a working paper produced by the women’s studies department of Wellesley College, and lists 50 “daily effects of white privilege” in the first-person perspective of the author from her experiences. Though McIntosh tried to cover herself by claiming her examples shouldn’t be generalized, her work is obviously not read that way in the identity-politics-dominated Obama years. If even some of these privileges existed in the 1980s, you would be hard pressed to find them now. A sacred text of the anti-White/third worldist/regressive left, Invisible Knapsack could use a good skinning. Here is a critical assessment of privileges 1-10.

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

This is going to be the first of many of these items which 1.) was more true in the 1980s than the 2010s, 2.) is a simple reflection of demographic majority and not inherent to being White, and 3.) has become increasingly tied to wealth in the United States, as it is generally more expensive to live in a White area than not (which doesn’t stop the small Asian population you are starting to find in >85% White suburbs). “Privileges” such as this one are also a question of agency since one can select what kinds of people they want to keep as company.

I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

Again, this costs money. Just being White does not mean you can physically separate yourself from low-trust non-Whites (or low-trust Whites for that matter). You need money and the means of getting 90 minutes outside of your workplace and back each day. Also this assumes we are “taught” to mistrust (by whom?) rather than learning to do so ourselves from experience, observations, and information (like FBI table 43!).

If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

Again, this is a money thing. For many of our people, aligning affordability and desirability is becoming increasingly difficult in the United States. The quest for “a nice neighborhood” and “good schools” is a latent desire for a vanishing America. Furthermore it is considered morally wrong to move away from diversity—which is what a large number of Whites like doing—so we have the privilege of having to disguise our motives with those dog whistles. White flight is a scorned phenomenon, one that the Obama administration has aggressively tried to neutralize through the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which applies affirmative action to housing and urban planning. So again, a White person needs a lot of money rather than a lack of melanin if he wants to both live somewhere affordable and demographically desirable. For many this would involve living beyond their means just to give their children an upbringing that comes close to their own. Political connections wouldn’t hurt either. Because you better believe if an area is deemed “too segregated” and only political enemies of HUD live there—conservative Whites—that the government will try to have it culturally enriched.

I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

Depends on the neighborhood. White person moving into a White neighborhood, sure why not? White person moving into a non-White neighborhood, evil gentrification. We must preserve the character of our neighborho—wait what? Oh, only “diverse” people are allowed to do that.

I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

Were I a White woman, there are certainly many areas I would not want to go shopping by myself, especially in any major American urban environment. Remember the viral video last year of a woman walking around New York being sexually harassed by entirely men of color? A female jogger was found recently in the city strangled to death in a park with her clothes pulled off. Where was her privilege?

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

Man, the 1980s must have been nice. In the 2010s, I can expect to see people of my race criticized for being represented at all, let alone widely represented. In fact, I can expect to see people celebrate the replacement of actors of Whiteness or of White roles with non-White ones, e.g. the widely-acclaimed Hamilton musical, diversity in comics, etc. Meanwhile the 2016 movie Gods of Egypt was widely condemned as racist for casting White people as North African deities.

When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

You mean a White supremacist capitalist patriarchy where literally all material wealth was derived from slavery? Skyscrapers made of cotton? Yeah I know all about our original sin and that sort of stuff, and why we need to stand aside and be replaced for the good of the world. In my educational experience, I don’t think I was ever assigned a US history textbook which didn’t bend over backwards to give non-White identity groups their own subsections in each chapter. The takeaway is that my people made our civilization oppressive and those who challenged us are the real heroes. Harriet Tubman is more important than Andrew Jackson.

I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

You mean taught that their race is a social construct and that any differences they might notice among the others are due to their own implicit biases and privilege? Yeah if I had kids I would be mortified to send them through our education system, which will indoctrinate them in the ideology of third worldism.

If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

I am sure you had no trouble finding a (((publisher))) for anti-White literature. In fact, I am sure you received mostly support from your colleagues in academia, and were you to publish this in the current year, it would get widespread favorable coverage in the liberal clickbait press, i.e. the press in general.

I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

I mean yeah if I do the whole opening my mouth and using my vocal cords thing someone is bound to hear me. But if I am the only White person in a group and not the leader, all other things equal I am probably not going to be given much weight. In fact, if I do find myself in some kind of decision-making group in which I am the only member of my race and therefore a racial minority, I would unironically be told to check my privilege, i.e. to shut up.

The next time you see someone spouting anti-White nonsense about privilege, combine rhetoric with hatefacts and shut it down.